The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories

by Mahvesh Murad

  CONCERNING ME. LIKE Scaevola (probably) I’m a poor man’s son. My father was a gardener, and before their marriage my mother worked in the hospitality industry; quite probably, the first time they met, money changed hands. I got my place at the Silver Lily because of my singing voice, which broke six months later, but by then I’d impressed my teachers enough to secure a scholarship to the Studium, which is where I’ve been ever since. I haven’t seen my family for thirty years, I don’t know if they’re even still alive, and to be honest, I’m not all that bothered. As I see it, I’m a moderately successful and useful collaboration between the Studium and myself. Most of all, I am by nature, upbringing and inclination a person of very little importance. As for the greater world outside the monastery walls, I bear it no ill-will, but what did it ever do for me?

  “I’VE READ THE manuscript,” I told them.

  They were watching me, like dogs watch their cruel master, ready for the first signs of a kick, ready to outsnatch the others if a reward gets thrown their way. “Well?”

  I took a moment to pull myself together. I can’t explain clearly when I’m shaking. Can’t breathe properly. “There’s no doubt in my mind,” I said, “that Scaevola found a cure for the Red Death. He deduced – quite brilliantly, I might add – that it’s miasmic in origin, being engendered by decay and corruption and spread through the air in the manner of pollen or spores. He states that he tested this hypothesis by brewing an antidote, which he dispersed in the same fashion as the disease itself propagates. He left detailed notes and case studies. There was a minor outbreak of Red Death in the Cunossa district in AUC 670 – I can verify that, from my own researches. It was remarkably short-lived, and abated with an abnormally low death rate. I now know that Scaevola cured that outbreak. He found a cure, and it worked.”

  Short pause, to let all that sink in. They were so quiet, you could hear the mice behind the wainscot. “So the bottle –”

  I held up my hand. “Nowhere in the manuscript is there a formula for the cure,” I said. “Either he didn’t record it, or he wrote it down somewhere else, and it’s lost. Now it’s entirely possible that the bottle contains a dose of the cure. If so, all we have to do is uncork it downwind within ten miles of the City, and the City will be saved. The label says, For the Plague. There is, of course, no reference to the bottle we have in the manuscript.”

  The Abbot looked as though he’d been holding his breath for a long time. “Go on,” he said. “I take it there’s more.”

  “More data?” I shook my head. “No. The rest of the manuscript is a sequence of alchemical experiments and calculations. It’s unfinished. My guess is, he died before he was able to complete the project, or write it up. The only way to ascertain the meaning of all that would be to replicate the experiments, step by step; my guess is, that would take between nine months and a year, before we could actually venture an educated guess as to what the procedure was actually designed to achieve. Whatever it was, it occupied the entirety of Scaevola’s thoughts and energies, from 670, when he came up with the cure, until his death, when it was probably unfinished.” I paused for breath, and went on, “Whatever it was, clearly Scaevola reckoned it was more important than curing the Red Death, which I think, though I can’t be sure, he regarded as just one step along a greater way. In other words, the cure was a by-product, not the end in itself.”

  Someone I didn’t know interrupted. “I know you can’t say for certain, but you can guess. What do you think he was really after?”

  I took a deep breath. “I can’t decide,” I said. “There are two possibilities, and the evidence for both is equally strong. Either he was on the track of an elixir of life – believing, falsely, as we now know, but didn’t then, that decay and entropy are miasmic rather than endemic, and can be cured like any other disease –”

  “Or?”

  “Or he was trying to breed a perfected form of the plague; one that couldn’t be cured.”

  Dead silence; then a lot of angry shouting. What was said doesn’t reflect well on the Order or scholarship in general, so I won’t bother with it. After a while they calmed down a bit, and someone asked me, “So what are you going to do?”

  “On the basis of what I know? I can’t possibly make that decision. I need more data.”

  The Abbot scowled at me. “Where from? There’s no-one left to ask.”

  The moment I hadn’t been looking forward to. “Actually,” I said.

  NECROMANCY IS FROWNED on, to put it mildly, in our profession. We teach our students that it’s impossible, explaining why, with irreproachably convincing arguments – it’s magic; magic doesn’t exist, it’s just silly superstition; we’re scientists, not wizards.

  That’s not strictly true. But only about six of us at any one time have the necessary qualifications, licenses and faculties to do it, and there has to be a resolution of the Grand Chapter, with a four-fifths majority, before the actual procedure can be carried out. Convening a Grand Chapter takes between six weeks and three months, depending on the time of the year and the state of the roads; quite apart from anything else, it costs a fortune in heralds’ fees, travel and accommodation expenses, the cost of having five hundred copies of the required documentation copied and illuminated, hire of the chapter-house at the White Cross (because we haven’t got a functions space big enough at the Studium); it’s a lot of fuss and bother and expense in order to do something that nobody wants to do and which is never necessary or justifiable.

  And quite right, too. It’s a singularly repulsive idea, and nobody in his right mind would want anything to do with it. And that’s assuming it is actually possible – which may not be the case at all. There are no known instances of a raising being scientifically recorded and written up in a book. It’s one of those things we don’t talk about.

  It’s typical of my luck that I happen to be one of the six. I studied – oh, for crying out loud, the M word – not because I’m remotely interested in all that junk, but because it’s an area of metaphysics that happens to coincide with the genuine, real science that I specialise in. Accordingly, I learnt how – in theory – to summon spirits from the vasty deep, turn milk sour, raise tempests at sea, cure warts with kisses and (so help me) raise the dead.

  In theory. I’d never actually tried it, of course. I’m a scientist, not a wizard.

  THE FACE IN the mirror blinked, pulled a sad face and gazed at me. “Who the hell are you?” it said.

  “Nobody you’d know,” I replied. “More to the point, who are you?”

  The face in the mirror was mine, of course; every familiar line and wrinkle, the soft little chins in stepped progression, like stairs. “I’m Antigono Scaevola,” said my face, and a wave of panic washed over its idiotic features. “What am I doing here? What’s happening? What are you doing to me?”

  “It’s perfectly all right,” I lied.

  “It hurts.”

  “It’s necessary.” No lie this time. “You are the ghost of Antigono Scaevola. I need to ask you some questions. The quicker you answer them, the sooner it’ll be over, and you can go.”

  He – I – looked scared to death. “You can’t do this,” he said. “It’s obscene.”

  “That’s rich, coming from you.”

  One of the Brothers was a soldier before he left the world and took Orders. He told me, in a battle, hand-to-hand fighting, you look into the eyes of the hideous monster who’s charging at you screaming and trying to kill you, and what do you invariably see? Terror. They’re scared to death, just like you. “What do you want?”

  I held up the bottle so it showed up in the mirror. I assumed he could see it. “This,” I said.

  “Oh, that.”

  “What does it do?”

  My eyes went blank, and that fatuous stupid look that means I’m up to something covered my face. I’m a hopeless liar. “It’s the cure.”

  “It cures the Red Death.”

  “Yes.”

  When I was a novice, the
other novices loved playing cards with me. They always won. “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “You want me to uncork the bottle.”

  “It’s the cure.”

  I thought for a moment. If I was him, what would I do? What would I be thinking? “I don’t think so. I think it’s the perfect plague.”

  “No. It’s the cure.”

  “I think,” I said to myself, “that you think, that if I’m here and I’ve raised you from the dead, things must be pretty serious. There must be a bad outbreak of plague, bad enough to take this risk. If I open the bottle and it’s the cure, tens of thousands will be saved. But you’re the most evil man who ever lived. You only found the cure so you could make sure the improved version was incurable. If this bottle really contains the antidote, the last thing you’d want would be for me to open it. So, you say it’s the cure, and the look on your face makes me think you’re lying.”

  He stared at me, then burst out laughing. “Are you serious?”

  I looked deep into my eyes, trying to see something there I could set foot on, like you do when you’re up to your knees in soft mud. “Are you the most evil man that ever lived?”

  “You’re the expert. You tell me.”

  It hurts. What it hurts, given that the dead are insubstantial, we have no idea; but all informed authorities agree, it hurts. Time, therefore, was on my side, not his.

  “I’m not a cruel man,” I said. “Unlike you, I don’t enjoy inflicting pain.”

  He grinned. “This hurts you more than it hurts me? I doubt it.”

  “So do I. And I can keep it up for a long time.”

  “Time has no meaning, where I am.”

  “That’s fine, then.” I leaned back and crossed my arms. He didn’t. “Let’s just relax for an hour. What’s the weather like on your side?”

  “What makes you think,” he said, “that I’m the most evil man who ever lived?”

  “You cured the Red Death and kept the cure to yourself. You invented the White Death.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. The White Death killed me.”

  I shrugged. “You’re careless as well as evil.”

  “The White variety was a mistake,” he said. “It was a side-effect of the cure. I created a vaccine – do you know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a sample of the disease, modified to cure it. Fire drives out fire, that sort of thing. But one of my early attempts to make a vaccine went wrong. Instead, I accidentally bred a more virulent strain. I tried to contain it, stoppered up in a bottle clearly marked Do Not Touch, but some clown of a novice opened it. I died as a result. So yes, I created the White Death. I was punished for it, though not nearly enough, I grant you. But not maliciously, believe me.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I gave me a contemptuous look. “How scientific.”

  “A hunch,” I said. “Based,” I realised as I said it, “on an inconsistency. You found a cure for the Red Death, but you never wrote it down. Therefore, your motive –”

  “Of course I wrote it down.”

  I blinked first. “You did?”

  “Of course. I called it A Cure for the Plague. I wrote it out and filed it in the library.”

  Now there he had me. Tradition says that all of Scaevola’s works were preserved in the Arrowhead library, but the actual index for the period in question is lost. “Did you?”

  “Of course I did. It’s still there. Isn’t it?”

  Raising the question, what happened to the index? When was it lost, exactly? I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t know, though I should have found out. “No,” I said. “There’s no record of anything by that name written by you.”

  “Oh, for –” He seemed genuinely upset. By then, I was working on the assumption that he was a far better liar than me, but that was just an assumption. “In that case, isn’t it lucky that I know the formula off by heart? You’ve got a pen and something to write on.”

  “Yes.”

  “Splendid. Now, then. Take one part sal draconis. Now it has to be absolutely pure; handle it with gloves, because the slightest trace of sweat on your hands will spoil it. Add one part –”

  “Let me stop you there.”

  “Are you mad? This is the formula. One part sal draconis. One part aqua regia fortissima. Add the salt to the acid, not the other way around, if you value your eyesight. Add one part –” he stopped. “You’re not writing.”

  “I have no way of knowing,” I said, “what you’re giving me a formula for.”

  “Idiot.”

  Fair comment. Writing it down couldn’t hurt. “One part sal, yes. Go on.”

  I took dictation. When he’d finished, I cast an eye over what I’d got; and yes, at first glance, from what I knew about the subject, I could see, it could well be a cure for a miasmic infection. In fact, it was brilliant, inspired, pure genius. It would cure the Red Death, and with a bit of work it was a foundation for a cure for the White Death. At first glance.

  He was looking at me. “Now do you believe me?”

  “This formula,” I said, “takes about nine months to prepare.”

  “Yes, about that. So what? It can’t be made any faster than that. Not possible.”

  “I think you’re rather clever. I think this is the genuine cure. I think the bottle contains the new, incurable plague. I think you gave me the cure to fool me into opening the bottle.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” The image in the mirror jumped to its feet, an angry, histrionic gesture. I did the same, by instinct or mere symmetrical attraction. Which one of us knocked the bottle off the table I really don’t care to guess.

  It fell. I watched it fall. It broke.

  I’M WRITING THIS, so you can figure it for yourself. The bottle, For the Plague, did not contain the spores of a new, incurable epidemic. By the time I’d registered the smashing of the bottle he was gone, and I was too exhausted and traumatised to get him back.

  On a sheet of paper on the table was the formula, a cure for the Red Death. Probably genuine, certainly useless, since by the time it was ready, the whole City would be dead. I had released what was presumably the antidote to the Red Death, but too far from the City for it to do any good. Wasted. Ah, well.

  Needless to say, I didn’t dare go back. I made my excuses to the Abbot, some rigmarole about having to look something up in a library somewhere, and rode as fast as I could in the opposite direction. I crossed the Vesani border just before nightfall. You don’t want to come in here, the border guard told me, there’s plague in Cortis Maior. I’m afraid I laughed at him.

  IF I WAS the most evil man in the world, and possibly I was for a while, this is what I’d do. I’d brew a bottle of the cure, leave it in plain sight, properly labelled. I’d use it to cure an outbreak. I’d then publish the formula for the incurable strain, the one that starts off take one part sal draconis, and say that was the formula for the cure. Simultaneous release, everywhere. That’s what I’d do. I think.

  The plague, Red and White varieties, continues to rage through the civilised nations of the Middle Sea. I heard the other day that it’s spread as far as the savages, the Arinholet and the No Vei; clouds and silver linings, I guess, though maybe that’s a trifle unfeeling of me. People – scholars, informed opinion – are starting to talk in terms of a level of mortality from which there can be no recovery; the end of civilisation as we know it, the end of Mankind.

  Maybe I have the cure, here, in my hand. Maybe withholding it will make me the most evil man who ever lived. Maybe every word he told me was the exact truth; I have no proof whatsoever that it wasn’t. I have all the ingredients laid out on the table, ready. They’ve been there for five years. The alchemical skill required to brew the formula is not great.

  I look at myself in the mirror, and ask myself: what would you do?

  Bring
Your Own Spoon

  Saad Z. Hossain

  HANU SAT BEFORE his stove, warming himself. It was cold outside, and worse, the wind scoured away the nanites, the airborne biotech that kept people safe. He had seen more than one friend catch death in the wind, caught in a pocket without protection, their lungs seared by some virus, or skin sloughed off by radiation. The thin mesh of packsheet formed a tent around him, herding together the invisible, vital cogs. Shelter was necessary on a windy night, even for those with meager resources.

  He was cooking rice on the stove, in a battered pot with a mismatched lid, something made of ancient cast iron. In some retro fashion houses, this genuine pre-Dissolution Era relic would fetch a fortune, but Hanu had no access to those places, and wouldn’t care either way. A pot to cook your rice in was priceless, as valuable to a roamer as the tent or the solar stove.

  He measured the quarter-cup of fine-grained rice into the boiling water, added a bit of salt, a half stick of cinnamon and some cardamom. The rice would cook half way before he added onions and chilies, perhaps a touch of saffron. In a way, Hanu ate like a king, although his portions were meager. He had access to an abandoned herb garden on the roof of a derelict tower, plants growing in some weird symbiotic truce with the nanites warring in the sky, nature defying popular scientific opinion. The rice he got from an abandoned government grain silo, sacks of the stuff just lying there, because people feared contamination. Almost everyone in the city ate from food synthesizers, which converted algae and other supplements into roast chicken at the drop of a hat.

  He let the rice cook until there were burnt bits sticking to the bottom of the pot. The burnt bits were tasty. The smell filled the tent like a spice bazaar, and he ate from the bowl using his wooden spoon. No one disturbed him, for which he was thankful. It was difficult to find a square inch empty in Dhaka city, but it was a windy night, the pollutant levels were on orange alert, and most people were indoors.